Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bay Area Reporter - September 28, 2000
Terry Beswick
"ACT UP/San Francisco is blocking access to life-saving information, and we're going to hold them accountable," declared Rebecca Hensler, one of the organizers of a newly formed coalition called AIDS Activists Against Violence and Lies.
Hensler was joined last Thursday, September 21 on the steps of City Hall by other members of the first local AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power founded here in 1988, as well as other AIDS activists and workers and a few candidates for local office in support of the boycott.
Some 200 individuals and a few AIDS groups have signed onto the boycott, published last week in a full page ad in the Bay Area Reporter and in a Los Angeles-based biweekly gay newsmagazine. The ad also calls for individuals to contact local officials to "demand that they prosecute fully all violent behavior, and protect HIV educators from personal harassment and intimidation."
Survive AIDS, one of the principal organizers of the boycott, maintains an alternative list of medical marijuana dispensaries on its Web site at www.surviveaids.org.
"They lie to the community and the media, and they personally stalk people who take a stand against them," said Hensler.
"The message is: don't harm yourself. Don't harm the community," said Survive AIDS' Hank Wilson, a member of the early ACT UP and candidate for District 6 supervisor.
"Clearly our crimes continue to be our vocal advocacy to inform the public, and most importantly, the lawmakers of the land, of the total sham of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis," responded an ACT UP/SF member in an e-mail following the press conference.
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